Crying Children Audibly Illustrate Border Crisis

The sound of children crying for their parents has echoed from more than a million computers and televisions after the nonprofit news agency Pro Publica released on Monday a tape made surreptitiously at a Mexico-U.S. border facility last week. The children’s torment is unbearable. One 6-year-old doggedly asks for her aunt to be called and gives the number to any adult who will listen. Consulate officials try to console the children — estimated to be between 4 and 10 years of age — with snacks and toys, while a border guard is heard to joke: “We have an orchestra here. What’s missing is a conductor.”

[Update: June 20, 10:15 a.m.] Late Tuesday evening, AP reporters Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza broke the news that babies — infants in diapers — were being held apart from their mothers and that the Trump administration was opening a fourth facility for them. The so-called “tender age” facilities were revealed by attorneys and doctors; reporters were not allowed inside the up-till-now secret facilities, which were described as clean and safe. Some children were so young they could not talk; some were crying hysterically. Reading the AP’s report live, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow became so upset that she turned her mike over to Lawrence O’Donnell, who was in Brownsville. One of the centers was called “Casa Presidente,” according to people O’Donnell spoke with; another was called “Esperanza Combes.” They said at least 11 infants were being held.

The sounds are not unfamiliar to Carpinteria immigration attorney Marisol Alarcon. She told a gathering last week that she’d witnessed a boy traumatized by a 24-hour separation from his mother after crossing the border. “Her son was so traumatized that he could not bear to be apart from his mom while she was being interviewed,” said Alarcon. “He had to stand outside the room, and I could hear him crying.” Another volunteer at the detention center told Alarcon he’d heard cries of anguish and panic from people emigrating from violence. “All they wanted to do was not be killed,” he said. “The U.S. government is torturing immigrant children and their families systematically, as an official policy. I’m ashamed. I’m infuriated.”